Doctoral Candidate
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/National Cancer Institute
Jennifer Lerman, MPH, RDN is a doctoral candidate in the Human Nutrition Program at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her current research includes the identification of factors associated with the trajectory of diet quality in infants and toddlers in the United States, as well as the exploration of methodological solutions for utilizing dietary indices to track diet quality longitudinally over time. She also is a program analyst in the Risk Factor Assessment Branch of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute, where she collaborates with a team of scientists to develop, evaluate and utilize the 2015 and 2020 Healthy Eating Index, as well as the new Healthy Eating Index-Toddlers-2020. Jennifer completed her MPH at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Dietetic Internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. She also holds a BS in Nutrition from Simmons University and a BA in English from Boston College. She was recently awarded the 2024 Mary P. Huddleson Award by the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the 2024 Published Research Award by the Pediatric Nutrition Practice Group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for the article “Evaluation of the Healthy Eating Index-Toddlers-2020.”